Western money will still go to Hamas

A small item in Palestine Today (autotranslated):

The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance Ismail Mahfouz will release the salaries of military personnel and civilians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories early next month, the usual manner.

Quoting the "Palestine" issued today by Mahfouz said : "The emergency government promised to lift the financial embargo and we await the application in this area, saying that political differences should not be reflected on the financial side and employee benefits."

Reuters adds some detail:

Palestinian Information Minister Riyad al-Malki said the emergency government knew of no Israeli conditions on the tax funds which Israel collects on the Palestinian Authority's behalf. "We will not accept any conditions. We determine how we will spend it," he said.

Abbas's aides said the emergency government believed it had a responsibility to pay those workers in Gaza, including members of the security services, who follow the instructions of the new government and not the Hamas administration.

"But it's unclear how they would make that distinction," one senior Western diplomat said.

The emergency government could use Arab funds, rather than the tax money transferred by Israel, to pay Gaza workers.

The West again is trying to oversimplify the Hamas/Fatah civil war, but in fact they have cooperated before and will cooperate again when the target is Israel. The West and Israel will resume aid to Fatah, and Fatah will pay its "employees" in Gaza who happen to be almost wholly Hamas members. Meanwhile, Hamas will whine about the "humanitarian crisis" in order to extort more Western money for them to build and buy weapons. And when the auditors come calling, the money going to Gaza will be "Arab funds" freed up by the huge sums paid by the West and Israel to Fatah.

The PA will get a billion dollars for free in the coming months and you can be sure that much of it will go to the Fatah terrorists and some more will end up in Hamas' coffers. The mistakes of the past are being repeated - over and over and over again.